CAMFA Series #1: Color

Feb232011

CAMFA is a program Women Enjoying Beer created and developed to help teach internal (within your company) and external (consumers) customers about beer. Educated beer sellers, servers and tenders as well as educated consumers are a boon to us all.

Today is the first of 5 in this series to dig a bit deeper on why CAMFA is important, can make a big difference in the knowledge base of your internal and external clients and therefore support and grow business.

CAMFA C = Color

When people think about color of beer, hopefully it’s more of the ‘colors’ of beer – plural. Beer color comes from the ingredients and primarily from the grain used in the process. Of course the other ingredients can play a part as well, albeit much more nominally.

When WEB hosts events, speaks, and educates, we encourage people to not be a beer racist. That is – to not judge your beer by its color. That’d be just as bad as any other color racism.

Color can give us some ideas of what MIGHT be in the glass, what flavor/s we MAY encounter and enjoy, or be indicators of other characteristics of the beer experience we’re going to engage in.

That said, color is only color. Color is not necessarily flavor or body or mouthfeel or alcohol content or aroma. WEB feels it’s very important to make sure people don’t always equate certain colors of a beer with anticipated or expected flavors and so forth.

Would you agree that someone asking for a ‘dark beer’ may or may not really understand what they want? Are they making the assumption that all dark colored beers are robust, high in alcohol or otherwise all lumpable into the same narrow definition? That’d be incorrect, shortsighted and opportunity missed.

Don't judge your beer by the color

The same goes for ‘light beer’. One thing about using the word ‘light’ in beer descriptions is that there is a misnomer that light beer is only light color and light flavor hand in hand. Once again, implementing beer racism of any sort, dark to light and back again, is something the beer community needs to continue to work to change.

With all the chatter and discourse, writing and blogging that swirls around craft/beer these days, to pigeon hole any kind of beer because of its color is doing yourself, your tastebuds and of course the beer a disservice.

What a great idea it’d be if we all drank our fresh, high quality beer – no matter what it was – from opaque vessels or were blind when we partook? Then we wouldn’t have any beer racism.

For now, be sure to educate on what color of beer means, how it got there and how diverse your beer can be no matter what color it is (in relation to other aspects of the beer experience).

3 Responses to “CAMFA Series #1: Color”

Jonathan

CAMFA seems like a great concept and I couldn’t agree more that you can’t really judge a beer by it’s color – at least, you can’t make too many assumptions about the AMFA, just from the C.

However – appreciating the visual beauty of the beer is highly worthwhile. I am guessing you are aware of this, but might want to expand on it… Maybe you do so elsewhere on the site, which, by the way, I am really enjoying!

Glad you are enjoying CAMFA and the site, Jonathan. I agree that the visual beauty (nicely said too) of beer is very much worth appreciating. We add Temperature sometimes too – Keep reading and we’d love to hear more thoughts when you have them. Cheers – Ginger